In another thread, one about extremes of weather, I noticed

[Hekate]

75. This is true. It's a tremendous drive, and can only be partly overridden by the rational brain...

That was something I didn’t fully get until my own biological alarm clock went off. What a life-lesson that was — I thought my rational mind was in total control, and boy howdy, did I ever learn to not be too judgmental.

Fortunately, I had the education, the determination, and the means to wait. And luck — this is where some of my outrage about abortion bans comes in — a big chunk of what happens to women comes down to luck.

As for individuals having fewer children, or none, as a country we actually know how. Means, motive, and opportunity. What we don’t have is political will, because we’ve allowed religious forced-birth fanatics to infiltrate every level of government down to the school boards.

The great majority of women vote with their choices of contraception — if allowed to. They all need what I had: someone to teach them early; the means to take care of themselves — access to reproductive health care at every level from contraception onwards including abortion, miscarriage, and birth so those events don’t kill them; and determination about their own futures.

The majority of women will, unless forced otherwise, will only have the number of children they can afford to rear for the next 20+ years of their lives. We are not stupid. We just need to be educated to expand our knowledge about “how many we can afford” to include the whole Earth.

But we won’t get anywhere if we deny how powerful the procreative urge can be, or conversely use it as a means to enslave women.